I'm reading Le silence de la mer and it's an old book, looks old like published in the 40s. Anyway, I've just started and ran across the following sentence

Nous ne parvenions à voir devant nous rien qu'un abîme fétide.

I know that one can use ne...rien for a negative statement and I see rien but the fact that vois devant and nous fall between ne and rien I think it would translate to something else. I'm not sure, I've only seen this with like je connais personne or je ne connais personne or je veux plus or je ne veux plus. Instead of pas one writes personne or plus. So a nice explanation about this sentence would be much appreciated.

So, I could write a verb and preprosition etc before ending it with the negative i.e. rien or personne etc.
– Nathaniel CatchingsJul 28 '17 at 0:42

Sorry but it's unclear what you are asking, especially as the negative is not only at the end but at the beginning (ne). The final word is just part of the negation, not the whole of it. You might want to provide an example of what you would like to write. Note also that the sentence je connais personne that you wrote in your question is probably not what you think. It is spoken French only and otherwise strictly equivalent to je ne connais personne.
– jlliagreJul 28 '17 at 1:03